*issues insane demands*

Since officially relegating My Funny Valentine to the ‘done’ drawer of my mental filing cabinet, I’ve got my metaphorical “shit” together and am ready to start writing again. For the past eight months, I’ve done naught but scroll miscellaneous scribbles in the margins of notebooks; ideas that have stayed just that… miserably pencilled in my journal between to-do lists and how-to references. I have a lot of momentum behind me, and as such, I quoth to thee the proverbial snowball rolling down a hill. The momentum continually picks up, but there’s always the queasy feeling that you’re still going downhill at an alarming rate, am I right?

Anticipating this, about a month ago I dug out a small notepad labelled “Great Ideas” that my well-intentioned (or naively optimistic) mother stuffed in my stocking last Christmas. I’ve made it part of my routine, somewhere between the first and fortieth cup of tea, to write down at least one new logline or story idea. It’s been marvellously beneficial, as I’ve spent the last couple of years living past glories and grinding the only few decent ideas I’ve ever had into the ground. New ideas are nice.

I’m currently in the draft stage of several shorts, and I’ve forced myself to revisit those old notebooks and scribbled margin-trolls to organize my larger ideas. If I could possibly summarize my last eight months of higher education into one little logline, it would be “Organization and structure make movies.” With that firmly cemented into the appropriate parts of my grey matter, I got my aforementioned shit together. Each feature or novel is in a neatly labelled bin – and I mean ‘neatly.’ My craftsmanship with a Sharpie is remarkable. All notes, all concept drawings, all inspirational photos or song lyrics, all research – is dumped into that bin. Each bin is accompanied by his or her (gender pending) mate: a bulletin board. With title, logline, central question, and inspirational phrases scrawls around the frame, these bulletin boards have Post-its marking out the scenes and plot points.

I have eight bin/board partnerships. Eight movies/novels. Well, seven movies and one novel.

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Author: Ashleigh Rajala

Ashleigh Rajala is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in numerous journals, both online and in print. She is passionate about using story-telling to build community in Surrey BC, where she lives and works on the unceded traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.
View all posts by Ashleigh Rajala